Third Solitudes
In the year 1850, there were fewer than 500 Jews in all of Canada. By 1930 that number had increased to over 150,000, with the largest proportion of Yiddish-speaking Jewish newcomers settling in the city of Montreal. Nestled between the predominant “Two Solitudes” of the French-Catholic and Anglo-Protestant communities, with Yiddish the most spoken language after French and English, the Jewish community became the third largest ethnic group in the growing city.
The Third Solitude.
Archives de la ville de Montréal
Carte postale, ca. 1914. Tiré des collections de Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Ernst Neumann print 1938, McCord Museum, Montreal
Courtesy of the Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal
Courtesy of the Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal
Fletcher’s Field Carte postale, ca. 1915. Tiré des collections de Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Ida Maze. Courtesy of the Jewish Public Library Archives, Montreal
Below are the poem texts by Ida Maze featured in the video. Translated from the Yiddish by Irving Massey and recited by Sebastian Schulman
Click on the images below to read the full text by Peretz Hirschbein in the original Yiddish and the in the English translation by Sebastian Schulman
